Day 21: Sarnath

Trip Start Sep 21, 2006
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Trip End Jun 01, 2007


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Thursday, October 12, 2006

I stroll back up to Godaulia past the struggling cycle rickshaws and stall carts, children on their way to school and cows doing whatever they please to catch an auto-rickshaw to Sarnath, 10km away. Sarnath is an equally holy place, as the site of Buddha's first sermons in India, in 528BC.
A new Buddhist temple has been built near the remains of a 1,500-year-old giant stupa. Granite plaques and a model of the Buddha and his disciples have been donated by Buddhists from Myanmar, Vietnam, Nepal and the UK. This site was a deer park in Buddha's day. Now children hawk scraps for you to feed to the few still here through the fences. It's a good place for bird and butterfly spotting. I sight a pair of mongooses, too, near the Jain temple.
The excavated foundations of a complex of monasteries are in a park beside the temple, and the remains of an inscribed column placed by the ancient Buddhist emperor, Ashoka 01 Temple at Sarnath
01 Temple at Sarnath
 . Its capital, four lions facing north, south, east and west now resides in the Archaeological Museum (bargain at 2 rupees entrance!) across the road. Though lions no longer run free in India, it remains to this day the symbol of the republic.
Dropped off near Godaulia, I return to the hotel via the ghats. They're less busy in the perishing midday sun. Boatmen are washing and doing their laundry. An inflated goat corpse is washed up with rotting floral offerings. Red-arsed monkeys pester sleepers in the shade. Boys launch kites into the distance. Veiled, dead bodies are lined up on stretchers by Harischndra Ghat. Firewood is weighed and priced before a pyre is built. I keep a discreet distance from the ceremony.
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